1998-11-26 04:00:00 PDT San Francisco -- 20 years later. First of two parts.

George Moscone is buried at
Holy Cross Cemetery
in Colma beneath a marker that bears his name, dates of birth and death and a simple inscription: "We love you, Dad."

There is no monument distinguishing the grave from the scores around it, no sign it is the resting place of a mayor who presided over San Francisco in a time of great tumult. That upheaval culminated in the City Hall assassinations of Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk at the hands of former Supervisor Dan White on Nov. 27, 1978 -- 20 years ago tomorrow.

Since the day a 70-car, police-escorted funeral cortege took Moscone to his grave, the city he loved has changed dramatically. How much of that change flows from the bullets White fired is a debate that rages even now.

To some, the 49-year-old mayor was cut down after he had already left a mark on the city that could never be erased -- opening government jobs to diverse groups, linking highrise construction to developer concessions and promoting big sewer and convention center projects.

"He was the first truly progressive mayor of San Francisco," said San Francisco State University political scientist Rich DeLeon, author of a study of San Francisco politics titled "Left Coast City." "To get elected, he didn't go downtown -- he demonstrated there was this new grassroots coalition of previously excluded groups."

To others, Moscone fizzled as mayor -- failing to

exhibit the showman skills of his predecessor, Joe Alioto, and demonstrating little of the administrative abilities and zeal of his successor, Dianne Feinstein.

"I really loved George Moscone, and I thought he would make significant changes for all of us and especially for those on the margins of society," said the Rev. Cecil Williams of Glide Memorial United Methodist Church. "But somehow as you looked at his genuine concern for people, at times he fell short of making it fully come together for himself and the city."

The San Francisco that existed when Moscone was mayor is far removed from the city of today.

While the city's population of 735,000 is only about 60,000 more than it was 20 years ago, the number of whites has dropped sharply. At the end of the 1970s, whites made up 53 percent of city residents, compared with 40 percent today.

In the realm of highrise, concrete and glass, the city is very different: About one-third of the city's skyscrapers were approved for construction during Feinstein's tenure.

And in the political milieu, the combat is far less explosive than it was when Moscone served as the city's 37th mayor.

Two decades ago, acts of political violence were not uncommon. One group alone, the New World Liberation Front, had been linked to more than 70 bombings, mostly in Northern California.

Many whites dwelling in conservative neighborhoods, such as White's Excelsior District, felt increasingly hemmed in. Gays were flocking to the city, and immigration was bringing thousands of Latinos and Asians into areas formerly populated by Irish, Italians, Germans and Russians.

"Moscone came into a culture particularly hostile to the massive demographic flows changing the city," DeLeon said. "You have to measure his accomplishments against the opposition arrayed against him -- the resistance from the longtime old guard."

In San Francisco in that time, paranoia and recrimination were prevalent, said historian Kevin Starr.

"Everything happening at that time was bruising," said Starr. "Up to the point of the Moscone-Milk assassination, this city had a fierce ideological edge to it, and opponents fiercely demonized each other. West of Twin Peaks demonized the gays. The gays demonized West of Twin Peaks. The old sons and daughters were demonizing the newcomers.

"You had one group that had dominated the city since the 19th century that was being displaced, and the group that was being displaced still had great force."

In the December 1975 mayor's race, Moscone defeated Supervisor
John Barbagelata
, an acerbic West of Twin Peaks
real estate
agent, by a mere 4,270 votes. That thin victory deeply affected Moscone, a San Francisco-born former St.
Ignatius High School
basketball star, according to his friend John Burton.

"He didn't win by a mandate when he should have won decisively," said Burton, now the state Senate's leader.

"There were old San Franciscans being vituperative toward him because of his position on issues like gays and race -- guys he went to high school with," Burton said. "These people saw the world changing and didn't understand it. What you don't understand, you don't like."

Taking office in January, Moscone immediately faced a multimillion-dollar deficit and an unfriendly Board of Supervisors. City craft workers struck for 38 days -- prompting critics to accuse the new mayor of not doing enough to resolve the stalemate.

Moscone had been accustomed to the clublike atmosphere of the Legislature, where for a decade he skillfully maneuvered as a state senator to win passage of many landmark measures. In San Francisco, he found the combat fierce and few deals being worked out over steak and martini dinners.

"I made many, many mistakes by not acting boldly," Moscone said after a year in office, "because that is what I felt the people wanted after Alioto -- a cautious, low- profile mayor. Now I know they want the exact opposite."

Early in his tenure, Moscone pushed through a ballot measure to build the Yerba Buena Center, renamed for him after his death. He played a huge part in keeping the Giants from moving to Toronto. And he secured a rebuilt sewer system with a $240 million bond measure after the state had slapped a building freeze on the city.

Those are all Moscone legacies -- as is the fact that City Hall is no longer so exclusively the province of white men. He was the first to appoint minorities, women and gays to city posts in large numbers.

"I think the legacy of inclusiveness, which I believe was the hallmark of George's approach to politics, remains and will never change," said Rudy Nothenberg, who served as a deputy mayor under both Moscone and Feinstein.

"It is a political reality only a fool would ignore."

But the battles, and some of his own missteps, had weakened Moscone's already thin support. Even many of his allies did not consider his re-election a sure thing.

His probable opponent in the 1979 mayor's race, Quentin Kopp, said: "I just felt I could have beaten him, and I would have. George had a number of problems from a managerial standpoint."

The assassinations' most obvious political fallout is well-known: Dianne Feinstein, a centrist supervisor who had planned to get out of politics, had her flagging career reborn when Moscone's death swept her into the mayor's office.

Proponents of the theory that Moscone's slaying brought a sea change in San Francisco have always argued that White achieved his goal -- to squash liberal rule in the city. Feinstein herself said, "I do think I brought the city to the center. I put an emphasis on running the city."

In her nine years as mayor, Feinstein presided over an unprecedented building boom downtown, something some of Moscone's admirers think he would have tempered. Under Feinstein, the amount of approved office construction amounted to more than 22 million square feet -- equal to almost 13 Bank of America buildings.

Many who worked with Feinstein argue that the city does not look much different from what it it would have looked like had Moscone lived -- because no mayor would have been able to say no to the development money flooding into San Francisco and other cities back then.

Under Feinstein, they say, San Francisco became the first city in the nation to impose several fees on developers, including ones that raised millions of dollars for transit, open space, public art, housing and child care.

"Would any mayor -- left, right or center -- have been able to reshape that boom?" asked Dean Macris, Feinstein's planning director. "I doubt it. In that time, more jobs were being created outside metropolitan centers, and to compete for those jobs, cities had to create commercial office space."

Hadley Roff, Feinstein's deputy mayor, said the city's financial plight was a crucial factor in that era.

"You cannot ignore the revenue gap that began with Proposition 13 and the huge cutback in federal dollars beginning with Reagan's election in 1980," he said. "So there was a need to try to create jobs and build city revenue to fill the gap -- building was looked at as a way to increase jobs and revenue."

Two leaders of the city's growth-control movement, Calvin Welch and Sue Hestor, argue that more highrises were built bigger and bulkier under Feinstein than would have been in a Moscone regime. They say the city failed to collect huge mitigation sums from the developers during the height of the building boom because Feinstein was so pro-development.

"There is no question Feinstein shifted the development of this city from one that under Moscone started to seek some mitigation agreements with developers as a cost of doing business in San Francisco to one under her where the Department of Planning's job was to approve projects with as little difficulty as possible for the developer," Welch said.

Hestor said that even if Moscone had allowed all the highrises Feinstein permitted, "there would have been different assumptions on what kind of conditions should have been imposed on the projects. Part of George would have backslid into dealing with the money people, but you could have tugged him back some because of where his soul was.

"George Moscone's life showed he cared a great deal about low-income people," Hestor said. "He would have understood it was right to require new developments to provide for child care and affordable, not market-rate, housing. We wouldn't have had to fight for five years" to win those requirements.

DeLeon said that if he were to inscribe on some tablet what he believes the mayor left behind, he would write: " 'George Moscone included the excluded.'

"So many avoid conflict and nothing happens, but he was brave enough to get into it. He decided to swim upstream. He chose to make history.

"His role in local history at that moment was to play the role of political leader. At great odds, he made a valiant stab at it."

For his part, Nothenberg -- who spent many years working for both Moscone and Feinstein -- is weary of attempts to place Moscone in some large historical scheme.

"The thing that aggravates me is that everyone sees George as a metaphor," Nothenberg said. "He was a vibrant, wonderful, humorous, warm being who loved life and loved this city. First and foremost, this was a personal tragedy -- he was cut down leaving a family and friends.

"The fact that there is a human tragedy at the heart of this is somehow obscured by everyone trying to make this a metaphor for what may or may not have happened to the city."

In 1947 meets John Burton and begins a close friendship that will last until Moscone's death.

Earns his law degree from the University of California's Hastings Law School and starts his private law practice in 1956 following a stint in the Navy. Marries Gina Moscone and has four children with her: Jenifer, Rebecca, Christopher and Jonathan.

In 1960 John Burton introduces Moscone to his brother Assemblyman Phillip Burton, who consults with Moscone and decides he will make a good candidate in a 1960 Assembly race against Republican Milton Marks. Moscone loses that race but then gets elected to the Board of Supervisors, where he serves from 1963 to 1966.

In 1966 Moscone is elected to the state Senate. Colleagues pick him to be majority leader, a post he holds until he is elected mayor in 1975. He pushes through landmark legislation on bilingual education, sex between consenting adults, marijuana decriminalization and hot meals for needy schoolchildren.

In 1974 he is an unannounced candidate for governor, but pulls out of the race before the Democratic primary after realizing he has no chance of beating Jerry Brown.

In December 1975, Moscone is elected mayor of San Francisco. He pledges in his inaugural speech to run an open administration allowing for "thoughtful and well- designed growth" and to keep a close watch on city spending. Survives a recall attempt in August 1977.

On November 27, 1978, former Supervisor Dan White -- who has learned Moscone is not going to reappoint him to the Board of Supervisors -- fires four bullets into Moscone, killing him.

CITY HALL KILLINGS

Events leading up to and following the assassinations.

-- December 1975: George Moscone is elected mayor, barely defeating conservative Supervisor John Barbagelata.

-- January 1978: Dianne Feinstein is elected president of the 11- member San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Taking their seats on the board for the first time are Harvey Milk and Dan White. Both have been elected in the first district supervisorial elections held in the city since 1898.

-- November 10, 1978: Citing personal financial difficulties, White resigns from the board. Later changes his mind and lobbies unsuccessfully to get Moscone to reappoint him.

-- November 27, 1978: Moscone is assassinated by White in his City Hall office; White then kills Milk before turning himself in at the city's Northern Police Station. As board president, Feinstein automatically becomes acting mayor and is subsequently elected by her board colleagues to serve out Moscone's term.

-- May 21, 1979: A San Francisco Superior Court jury finds White guilty of two counts of voluntary manslaughter -- not murder -- in the killings of Moscone and Milk. The verdict sets off the White Night Riots involving thousands of protesters outside City Hall. Sixty- five police officers and dozens of civilians are injured and $400,000 worth of property is destroyed, including 14 police cars.

-- October 21, 1985: White commits suicide -- asphyxiating himself by carbon monoxide poisoning in the garage of his Excelsior District home, a little more than nine months after being released from prison. He served five years, one month and nine days for the killings.